and we shed what was left of our summer skin
by but seriously
Summary: "You're going to kill me?" Except it doesn't sound like a question. [klaus/caroline, rebekah, elijah]


**notes:** yes, tis i, back with klaroline sex yet again. i can't stop. i need help, like some divine intervention or something because i have become such a pervert for these two shitfacers. this fic was prompted on tumblr, and i kind of just copy/pasted the entire thing here, so it's pretty much unbeta'd. i'm too tired, do not judge me, I PROMISE I READ IT AFTER I POSTED IT AND FIXED A FEW THINGS but i kind of want to leave it like this, raw and unedited, a little bit terrible. this is what klaroline does to me.

fic title courtesy of death cab for cutie. prompt: "Settle past a patience where wishes and your will are spilling pictures."

* * *

**and we shed what was left of our summer skin,**

.

.

Caroline picks lace trimmings off of dresses, tears apart their lining, turns them inside out. She shoves shoes off of racks and upends the coat rack and tips the ridiculous amount of lipstick on the vanity into a big box.

Elijah stands just inside the room, staring. Caroline wants to tell him he's welcome to help any day now; Rebekah's bed sheets aren't going to undress on their own. And she's about to, she's ready to burst, those words a painful stopper in her throat, but when she turns to look at him again he's gone. The only evidence he'd ever been standing there is the door he leaves slightly ajar.

These days, Elijah doesn't even remember that she's every much a part of this house as they are; he doesn't even remember which room she'd taken up in all those years ago, and yet… he still remembers that she hates having to close doors after people, hates seeing the backs of them when they leave her behind.

She stands there, lace in her hands and thread in her hair and remembers how quietly cruel he is.

.

.

Caroline can hear Klaus moving in his own room, mostly restless pacing. Occasionally she hears doors slam. She doesn't flinch.

He's become a parasite in his own skin, face sallow and teeth ready to rip. She smells blood on him in the space between them, the wooden staircase and the pockets of empty, soundless air between floors, wood and steel and golden burnishing not enough to drown the smell of him.

He smells like blood, always, a mix war veterans and substitute teachers and vacationers and lonely travelers he picks up on his way home, but this blood - she knows this blood all too well, the jasmine notes and the sting of metallic that doesn't quite belong to these times - not really.

Caroline picks up her pace, stuffs clothes into plastic bags, and just how much lingerie does a girl need? She's tugging at a Louis Vuitton travel case from the top shelf when a pair of dusty old pom poms falls in her face.

Odd, how Rebekah's kept the remnants of a past that seem so childish, so fickle, even in her hundred-and-two-year old hands. And these hands, smooth teenage hands, not a wrinkle in sight, they shake when the shiny faded plastic starts falling away.

.

.

The pictures are the hardest.

She can't quite bring herself to look at them, the pictures of them turning cartwheels in a field so long ago, long-faded polaroids stacked in a black velvet box, pictures of Rebekah and Klaus and Elijah and Kol that even she's never seen before.

_Sentimental bitch_, Caroline whispers, and her tear-salted breath bounces off the photographs to cool on her cheeks. She's crying, but she doesn't make a sound - if Klaus can be quiet as the night, silent as a fox, stealthy as a wolf, she can be doubly so.

.

.

She feels a hand warm her back. Lithe, calloused fingers that she can feel through the wool of her sweater, whitened scars that burn her skin.

"You shouldn't be doing this," he says. He whispers. He's still quiet.

"There's nobody left to do it," she tells him. Elijah would be long gone by now, not even his scent lingering in the air. She shakes his hand away, she can smell Rebekah's blood on him and it's disgusting, it's _suffocating_, and Klaus, he lets himself be suffocated by it.

Klaus doesn't reach for her again. He stands there, staring, eyes dull, his hands clean, and there isn't a single thing about him that might give away how he still keeps his dead sister's blood stained clothing deep in the recesses of his room, still clutches at them with a rage so stilled inside him that you hardly know it's there.

But it's there.

Caroline looks at him, and he looks back. Whole worlds have fallen away and she can still feel him marking her skin—teeth and tongue and aching, aching heartbreak.

.

.

"Where do you think he went?" Caroline asks one day over dark cherry tea. Klaus passes her the sugar without her having to ask, and she leaves the scones with the most blueberries in them for him.

Klaus shrugs. He probably knows all his older brothers' haunts, knows him the way they had run away together centuries ago. Maybe he thinks this one last kindness to Elijah. No brother - I don't give _all _your secrets away.

At night he waits by the fireplace but she doesn't join him. He looks at her longingly, and her heart twists - it's been so long, so long—

The grandfather clock ticks by. Klaus opens his mouth, but she's already heading for the door. Her room is dark, plush bed and crushed velvet sofa taking up most of the space, her vanity reflecting the starry night outside. She slips into her silk sheets and pretends she doesn't see Rebekah lying next to her, giggling over silly movies where the girl and the boy hate each other at first, and then fall madly, dizzy in love.

.

.

But Caroline can't sleep.

Rebekah's room across from her's is empty, her clothes thrown away, her things burned. Marcel long dead, remains scattered all over town, and yet she feels a burning deep in her heart, a desire to bite with her teeth and rip with her nails, blood oozing from the cracks of her teeth, cities crumbling to dust in her hands, all the places Rebekah's ever been and ever wanted to completely wiped off the face of the earth, and she weeps bitter bitter bitter tears all over again, and this time she doesn't bother muffling it with a pillow or hiding the tremble of her shoulders—she rips off her bedclothes and marches down the hall, kicks open Klaus' door and shoves him away from the easel he'd just set up.

He crashes against his paint jars, glass breaking and water dripping into the floor, his hands balled into fists he doesn't throw, teeth bared as if he actually had the galls to crush her throat into a messy pulp of streaming veins and battered flesh.

"Go on," she says, eyes flashing. "Come on, Klaus. I know you've still got it in you. Come on, show me your teeth, tear me apart. You know you want to."

"Caroline," he says. His voice is low and hoarse and tearing at the seams and she wants to scream _shut up_, stop _talking._

Caroline shoves him again, and when Klaus doesn't budge she does it again, and again, and again and again and again until he's backed into the wall and her tiny fists beat against his empty shell of a chest and her forehead rubs against the rough cotton he's wearing, shoves him until she feels his fingers circling her wrists, _crushing_.

"Did you know?" she cries into his shirt. "Did you know what Marcel was planning, all those nights you and him laughed over drinks and picked fights over bars? Exchanging best friends forever bracelets and toasting to your friendship, you _bastard_. You wouldn't listen to me - no, little bird that I am, you thought it was all behind you—"

"Stop it," Klaus says, and he sounds helpless and he sounds furious and he sounds miserable, like he wants her to stop talking, wants to slant his lips over hers in a way they haven't in a long time, but he needs this, he knows he does, so maybe that's why he doesn't flip them around and press _her _into the wall like she knows he's capable.

Like she wants him to.

"Fight, damnit," Caroline says into his beaten chest, lets her damning words creep like bruises that would never mar him. "You look so pathetic, just standing there. When was the last time you fought for this, fought for me—"

You're not even living anymore, she cries.

I wish it was you, she cries.

I wish it was you instead of her, she cries.

And she hears his heart thrash against his rib cage, feels his hands around her wrists just ready to snap, sees the edge of the world in his eyes. She pours herself into him and he just stands there cradling her like he could either break her or be part of her, and she feels her breath leave her lips when she sees two strangers in a still house, two strangers that should have left a long time ago but staying only because they do not have anywhere else to go.

She's not really of use to him anymore; looking for the missing pieces of herself in the remnants of a dead girl's room. And Klaus couldn't possibly be of any use to _her, _he is a fire burning low and death dealt in an unforgiving hand, unless - unless—

She takes a deep breath, the longest she's ever taken, and asks, "You're going to kill me?". Except it doesn't sound like a question.

Klaus looks down at her and she sees a deep pain in shades of blue and gray. "Don't you dare," he snarls, and for the first time in weeks, months, years, he brings her close to his chest. Filling her. "Don't you dare sound hopeful."

.

.

They find each other that night, hungry and grieving, with teeth and tongue and bucked hips and silent cries. They find each other, these two strangers, and she cries when he enters her, and he brushes her tears away with his lips, licks the salt from her cheeks, and when she comes with his name an insistent wail on her lips, she's never seen him look so whole.

.

.

Caroline likes the way the morning light paints the room in pinks and oranges, wonders how Klaus would mix the colours should he want to paint them. She hasn't watched him paint in so long, she realizes. Maybe she'll join him later.

She rolls over in the bed and sees the plane of Klaus' bare back and traces the red lines she'd scratched last night. Presses her lips to them.

It takes Klaus a while to stir, but he's always been a little slow in the mornings. He turns over and suddenly his nose is nuzzled in the hollow of her neck, and she can't believe how she's forgotten how warm he is, with his arms crushed around her and her toes tangled in his.

Klaus lets out a sigh against her hair, and she hasn't seen him breathe this freely in years. His eyes close against the tender rustle of her fingers in his hair, down the side of his face, scratching down the stubbly grain of his chin.

He tilts his face upwards to catch her lips in his own and she returns it hungrily, takes his bottom lip between her teeth and _bites_when his hands explore her thighs. She pushes him back against the pillows and his hands steady her as she straddles him.

"Selfish little thing, aren't you?" Klaus still sounds sleepy, but his eyes have a glint in them that burn when she arches into him.

"And what if I am?" His fingers are digging into her back now, and she trails hot kisses up his chest as she presses her hips down against his once again. His head falls back as he groans, long and hurt, and he's so hard she gives a wicked little laugh.

It sounds good in her ears, something light rising in her chest, so she laughs again, giggles in fact, when Klaus, hoarse, asks her to stop being such a tease.

"You did say I was selfish," she points out, pouting. Klaus groans again and holds her down the next time she grinds against him. She doesn't complain when he flips them over so he's on top, grinning wolfish down at her.

She plants a kiss on his nose and smiles when he wrinkles it. So easily ticklish, he is, and she's glad that's something she hasn't forgotten at least. She reaches for him to do it again, but he ducks his head down and kisses her full on the lips, and the taste of him lingers in her tongue.

He pushes into her while they're still kissing, and she gasps, her fingers scrabbling down his shoulders, scratching into the small of his back, _yes_, yes, _right_ there, just keep - just keep doing that. She demands to be on top again and he surrenders to the clench of her thighs and the rock of her hips. The sounds coming from deep inside her is a delight to him, she knows, so she pushes him back against the headboard, presses her breasts flush against his chest, and gives the most breathless of whimpers into his ear, and there it is—his teeth clench, his fingers bruise, his hips spasms and he peaks, but not before pressing his thumb against her clit so that her breath catchers, her whimpering breaks and her vision whites out. She comes harder than she has in years.

She falls against him and he runs his hand through her hair. He sets her down at his side and her arm circles his waist. Her thundering heart slows with every breath she takes, and her eyes start to close as he starts rubbing circles into her back.

"Love," Klaus whispers, sated, and that's that. It's nowhere near a declaration, no allusions to carriages or diamond rings or white picket fences, and she's immensely grateful to him for it. There's no need for it, not when they're still so raw, trying to find home in the rumpled sheets and trailing ivory drapes.

But he doesn't smell of his sister's blood and she's not thinking of the many ways she could burn Rebekah's room, and maybe this is the beginnings of a halfway ending.

This is enough, she thinks. They've found each other again, and this is enough.

_fin_


End file.
